All the Light We Cannot See

In the early 1930s in Paris, a very young Marie-Laure LeBlanc has lost her sight and is slowly learning how to get about without it.  In Germany, orphan, Werner Pfennig is interested in radios and how they work.  He is unlike other boys his age who are more interested in being soldiers in the new order.  Werner and his sister, Jutta, secretly listen to a radio that he has built learning about a larger world, while Marie-Laure learns by touch, and sound in the museum where her father works.

By late 1939 Parisians begin to live in fear of a German invasion.  In June of 1940, Marie-Laure and her father flee Paris ahead of the advancing Germans.  They end up in Saint Malo.  Meantime, Werner is taken from the orphanage and inducted into the Hitler Youth, his instinctive knowledge taken advantage of.  But due to losses on the Russian front, Werner's age is advanced on paper by two years, and he finds himself suddenly a soldier in the Wehrmacht.  A soldier who knows how to triangulate radio signals.

In August of 1944 the war comes to Saint Malo.  Marie-Laure and her great-uncle Etienne help the resistance by broadcasting a series of numbers on a secret radio set he had built many years before.  Werner is also sent to Saint Malo, to search for a radio broadcasting on behalf of the resistance.

Author Anthony Doerr has woven a tale that draws one deeply into.  Although the chapters are short and revert back and forth between the two main characters, at no time does the story seem disjointed.  I was unable to put this book down.  It was a very good read.

Anti-Soviet Activities

Pyotr Kirov and his KGB partner Bogdanov have been assigned the task of investigating The Great Jewish Antibiotics Ring.  However, the fraud squad gets to Victor Gusev, the main suspect, first.  He is shot before he can be interrogated.  In the hospital he begins to vomit blood.   Upon examining the vomit and blood, Kirov discovers diamonds.

Later, after Gusev dies, the doctor who worked on him reveals that she had administered him some of the antibiotics he had in his possession.  Kirov wonders if these might have killed him.  Their source seems to be Bulgaria.  Bogdanov discovers that the drug operation could be a GRU operation.  Why would the GRU be involved?

Kirov an d Bogdanov discover that the antibiotics are made in Bulgaria, so Kirov travels to Sofia to investigate further.  Upon his return, he is questioned by another security force as to why he had been to Sofia.  He also finds out that perestroika may not be all that it is cracked up to be as jobs are on the line.

In this sequel to "Farewell to Russia", author Jim Williams takes the reader down the path that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union and what would inevitably become another corrupt regime.  A good read.